


The World Becomes

by Iki_teru



Series: In the litany of your name [7]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: F/M, Gen, here's hoping for fluff, leon and yuffie: the slowest burn, with a pinch of probable schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 10:56:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14810031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iki_teru/pseuds/Iki_teru
Summary: Hollow Bastion is coming back together and Yuffie finds an unexpected job in this new world. (bonus: Yuffie is the best adult and runs away both literally and metaphorically from the strange feelings she has around Leon.)





	The World Becomes

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you just have to write a gratuitously soft thing because the world is too hard. No song or lyrics this time.
> 
> Con-crit is, as always, welcome and appreciated. This piece is entirely self-edited. Enjoy.

Hollow Bastion shakes itself back together piece by piece, day by day. There are times where it's unthinkable to leave the safety of the library, where moving beyond the sound structure and supported walls is impossible and they sleep in shifts beneath the staircase, away from the shelves and shelves of books. Yuffie stays just this side of queasy, apparently motion sickness and earthquake sickness go hand in hand. She spends a lot of time with her head between her knees, counting her breaths to keep the meager contents of her stomach in her stomach and not all over the floor. (She likes it best when Aerith sits with her because Aerith rubs the spot between her shoulder blades that helps ground Yuffie. She tried asking Cid to do it once but he didn't apply pressure properly and his hands were more callous than skin so it just  _ hurt _ and left her more jarred and nauseous than before. Leon is sympathetic to her plight and has offered the soothing circles between her shoulder blades and he's almost as good at it as Aerith, except his gloves are cold and when he takes them off it's worse because his hands are too warm she's too aware of the press of his fingers against her spine, the heat radiating from him and that sends a different type of fluttering through her belly.)

They make it out every third day or so. There isn't much to look at, in the beginning. Crumbs of buildings and streets, stretching the border of the world a little bit at a time. Nothing is familiar to Yuffie, not yet at least and she keeps hoping something will spark a memory, a feeling,  _ anything _ because the more she looks around the more foreign everything feels and the more she longs for familiar cobblestone streets and constellations that only she can trace through the sky.

Then the people start showing up, not during the quakes thank whatever deity happens to be listening, just appearing around corners and in alleys. Usually asleep, usually in clusters of two or threes (nobody has shown up all alone yet, which is a different kind of blessing.) Somehow Cid and Leon and Aerith and Yuffie become the people to look to, maybe because they got here first, maybe because theirs are the only dry eyes in the crowd (these people don't feel quite like they're coming home, more like they're being uprooted again and man Yuffie can relate to  _ that _ but she keeps a sunny smile on and buries her own bitter feelings and keeps the memories of Traverse Town tucked close to her heart for the most part. If comparisons are made well... that can't be helped much, Hollow Bastion is just so  _ different _ even after it stops shaking itself together and leaves them with piles of debris and buildings that are only half safe to even look at. The air is crisper and drier and the paths are unfamiliar and the shadows aren't as deep, which mean they aren't as good for hiding and sneaking and the roofs aren't stable enough to run along, not today, not yet, and there's so much work to be done.)

Leon says it's not really that different than when they showed up at Traverse Town, that they built a shanty town in the early days just so the people who kept showing up could get by but Yuffie doesn't remember that. She remembers pushing the wheelchair-bound Cloud around and helping in the kitchen and being underfoot a lot and getting yelled at by Leon and Cid, which alright that hasn't really changed. 

She doesn't remember the smell of sawdust as they took the broken bits and reshaped them into something useful, doesn't remember the cadence of hammers against nails or the sting of paint in the eyes as houses were formed where nothing could be before. 

That's all she'll remember this time, from the beginning of starting over again (again again, she prays at night to the stars and the heart of worlds that this is it, please not again, please let them stay still this time. She doesn't want to do this  _ again.)  _

Everyone seems to find their place in this new world order easily enough. Cid flits about being carpenter or electrician or plumber or whatever is needed today, which makes sense, he's always been the best at this type of piecemeal existence, was Traverse Town's number one handyman for anything from faulty wiring to clogged toilets to engine trouble for the handful of vehicles that made it through unscathed (Yuffie follows him around for three days but after the seventh time she has to visit the first aid station they've set up she gets banned from helping rebuild). Aerith scrounges for recognizable, edible plants and starts a garden almost as soon as the world is proclaimed stable. She spends long mornings showing anyone willing to learn how to prune delicate buds back, which plants should be potted and which should be planted directly into the ground, which respond best to sunlight or shade or combinations thereof (Yuffie tries to help her out but she can't tell what the good plants are from the bad and pulls the wrong weed shaped things out and is politely asked to find something better to do with her time.) Leon takes to leadership like a fish to water although Yuffie prefers to think of it as his innate desire to boss people around. He looks a tad ridiculous with a clipboard under one arm and his gunblade lying in wait on his back, making the more mundane residents nervous as much as he makes them feel protected. Yuffie doesn't even bother following him around, he wades into building sites that she wasn't allowed into before she got banned from the whole process. 

So she ends up wandering. The heartless are still around although their numbers greatly reduced (something they won't appreciate until they start swelling again and everyone realizes that  _ shit _ the problem isn't going away at all like they had hoped but that's later. It's always later, but at least this time they won't have to run.) Yuffie cleans up the handful of Shadows lurking about without thinking too hard on it. It's barely even a chore, after the last days of Traverse Town, after the way Hollow Bastion was infected when they first arrived. 

The children seem to think otherwise. 

Of course Yuffie had known there were kids showing up with their families. It’s kind of hard not to hear the crying and screeches of laughter that were so interspersed you almost couldn't distinguish them. But she hadn't really been  _ aware _ of them. Not until she turns around one day and sees four pairs of eyes peering up at her, expressions wide and filled with awe. 

"Are you a superhero?" the little girl in the front of the group asks in a low whisper. It was so unexpected that Yuffie snorts, startling the children. Which only makes Yuffie laugh harder until she has to sit down for lack of air. 

This seems to break whatever spell the children are under and they find her significantly less reverential, coming up to lean against her knees and babble a quick series of questions and reach for her shurikens, which she has to tuck away quickly and warn them not to touch. "Those are sharp, you guys can seriously hurt yourselves." And man, had she ever been this young? No wonder everyone had been having conniption fits with her back in the day. 

"How did you make the monsters go away? Aren't you scared?" 

"Well, sure. Only an idiot isn't scared. But I've had lots of practice against the heartless. They were everywhere back h-" she stopped, coughing into her fist. "Back where I used to live." 

"We never saw them before here," a freckle-faced little boy admits. "We don't know where we are but our parents were really happy to be here and keep saying this place is home." he frowns. "It's not home to us though." 

Silence swoops into the moment as all the children look in a different direction and Yuffie recognizes the glassy sheen to their eyes. "It is though," she finally chokes out. "The world was lost for a while, and everyone got scattered but someone rescued it and it called all its children home. Your parents and you. Which means this world claims you, so it might not feel like home right now, but it will. I promise." 

That's that, she thinks as she escorts the children back to the central square where they run off shrieking to their parents, stories already spilling from their lips  _ the world is alive mama! Dad, dad did you know the world loves us? _ Leon casts Yuffie a questioning glance, one that she shrugs off. It's not like she really knows how to explain what happened in that alley anyway. 

The next day there are more children. Not that they magically appeared, just that the first group went and found their friends and before Yuffie knows it she's got a gaggle half a street long following her. There's too many to go out looking for heartless, she won't risk them like that so she finds a quiet spot, back against the wall as she sits down putting her eye level with her unexpected charges. 

"Alright," she sighs. "Whadda want?" 

They all but surge forward, pressing into her space, their voices overlapping with questions and queries and requests and demands. It takes her a long minute to untangle the threads, to shout over them  _ raise your damn hands if you want to speak! _ but that at least creates some semblance of order to the madness. She points to a girl near the front sporting braided pigtails. "How come you know so much?" 

Yuffie grins. It is not a pleasant expression; more in line with one who only just realized they had been handed a great power and had little to no one present to keep them in check. She leans forward, bracing her hands on her knees. "Oh, that's an easy one. I'm a ninja. We know everything." 

This earns her a collective gasp and a long afternoon spent every question she dare (there are a couple, like  _ where do babies come from _ that earned a pointed finger and an "Ask your parents, ninjas aren't at liberty to reveal that particular life mystery." Because no  _ way _ was she going to teach a bunch of snot-nosed brats about the birds and the bees.) She rarely tells the truth when she can help it, which is actually quite a lot because  _ man _ these kids have some crazy questions and Yuffie would require like. Ninety billion PhDs just to keep up with them. So she gets creative, tapping into stories she remembered her grandmother telling her as a child, and even Aerith when she had been little and sick and Traverse Town still seemed like a dream they would all wake up from sooner or later. 

When everyone scatters for dinner Yuffie figured that  _ today _ would be the end of it. Surely the kids would tell their parents the stories she made up and they wouldn't be allowed anywhere near her come tomorrow. 

She’s proven wrong, again. This time there were so many that she was starting to suspect someone had opened a door between the worlds because no  _ way _ was Hollow Bastion hoarding all these kids. Where the hell did they put them all? (Later, Leon would gesture to the shaky town they were building up and level Yuffie with a look that she would choose to ignore in favor of shoveling the food Aerith had kindly provided into her face.) There are more questions, some involving requests for repeat stories, for the kids who had missed them the day before. Yuffie gets more into it than she would have expected, getting up to stretch turns into character acting, which means voices follow and then she’s putting on one woman shows without meaning to. (Her friends stop by to watch when they can. Not that she knows, not that they intend to tell her. Aerith is the only one who steps forward enough to be more than a person-shaped shadow at the edge of Yuffie's accidental collection of children. Cid swings by between jobs, shaking his head in bemusement before moving on. Leon stays in the far back. He wouldn't tell her he had been there for years and when he finally admits it, it seems like such a little thing after all the other things he has to confess to before he can get to that.) 

Yuffie comes home with a dry throat and a sore back. Aerith fusses over her, gives her a warm drink and sends her off to take a hot bath. "You deserve it," she says. To which Yuffie splutters, dribbling her drink all over her top. 

"For what? I didn't do anything all day except play with some kids." 

Aerith blinks at her. Then blinks again and laughs, loud and bright and warm. "Is that all you think you did? You really don't know. Oh Yuffie, before you started telling stories all those kids sat around crying, thinking they were dead and being punished. You brought so much light to their lives. Everyone has been more productive these last couple of days because they haven't had to worry about the children. That's all thanks to you." 

Ears going red and whole face growing hot, Yuffie is helpless to do more than babble a quick reply. "W-whatever. I was just telling stories. No big deal." She tries to beat a hasty escape, tries to pretend that Aerith's words haven't affected her but she's not looking where she's going (again) and slams neatly into Leon's chest. He catches her by the elbows before she can teeter too far backward and end up on the floor ( _ again _ ) and for the first time in a long time, there's something so close to a smile on his face that she can't pretend it's a trick of the light. 

"Careful," he says with something like a cousin to a chuckle in his voice. "What would the children say if their favorite ninja showed up injured tomorrow." 

"They'd say  _ Yuffie what happened! _ and I would tell them my heroic tale of taking out monsters while they slept snug in their beds and they would have stars in their eyes and beg to put up a statue in my honor." Leon still had her by the elbows, she could see the pulse running through his neck, was close enough to hear the gentle shift of the chain of his necklace as he breathed in and out and she didn't know what to do with any of this so she kept talking. "I'd be very humble about it, of course, and insist that there's no need for all that. That as long as the kiddies remember my tales, my heart can rest peacefully. They'll vow to take up arms in my honor and I'll have to talk them out of it before one of them accidentally puts an eye out with a dinner fork. You know, all in a day's work." 

Leon let out a pleased little hum, another noise that bordered on mirth and Yuffie felt her head spin as the sound rumbled through her bones. “Of course,” he says in a tone that she doesn’t understand. 

"I have to go shower," she blurted because for a minute she thought  _ he sounds like a cat _ and then  _ I wonder if he would purr if I pet him _ and then  _ he really does have nice hair _ . Which was something she wasn't going to think about because it spiked her heart rate and she wasn't sure what to do with it. "Long day being heroic for tiny humans." 

He finally let go of her, stepping carefully to the side to let her pass. She’s too much of a coward to look him in the face, makes a beeline for the bathroom and takes great care so she doesn’t fall and wind up in a compromising situation because if Leon touches her while she’s vulnerable and soapy with a twisted ankle, she might just combust and  _ then _ where would the kids get their stories? 

So yes, she focuses on not focusing on his dumb hands or the dumb upward tilt at the corner of his mouth or his dumb pretty eyes. For the sake of the children. 


End file.
